


Heal(with me)

by onetether



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, mention of the gaang - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:01:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26646448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onetether/pseuds/onetether
Summary: Katara and Zuko talk and realize that they need to take time to heal, and heal together.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 26





	Heal(with me)

**Author's Note:**

> This is a random one-shot that popped into my brain while listening to Heal by Tom Odell. The lyrics scream zutara so I had to write this. To me, their relationship, whether someone sees them as platonic or romantic is proof that you can heal from tragedy. It could take a day or years. But you can heal. And Katara and Zuko, coming from warring nations to meet, become friends(and fall in love) is something truly beautiful to see.

_____________

Take my mind, take my pain

Like an empty bottle takes the rain. 

Take my past and take my sins, 

like an empty sail takes the wind 

And heal, heal, heal, heal

And tell me somethings last

And tell me somethings last

_ Heal, Tom Odell _

___________

  
  


_ Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.  _

In the bleak silence that enveloped Zuko’s room, all Katara could hear was the clock. Another second without Zuko. Another minute where she stood at the foot of his bed and watched him sleep. He was swathed in red. Deep, rich, red blankets, Fire Nation symbols embroidered onto the pillows, and a dark red tunic that lay in a heap on the floor. In the midst of all the red, Katara spotted a glint of blue, a gift from her, wrapped around Zuko’s wrist, and she flushed. Two days ago she had given Zuko a Water Tribe healing bracelet that Gran-Gran had sent for her, and she hadn’t expected him to still be wearing it, despite the bright smile and hug he had given her after. 

Even now, unconsciously, Zuko’s right hand gripped his wrist, almost completely covering the bracelet. As Katara’s eyes travelled over Zuko, she noticed how asleep, Zuko looked his age, 16 years old and Fire Lord. But every time he woke up, Katara realized the years that placed themselves on him. Experience, hardship and trauma wore Zuko down. 

The entire past year had taken a toll on her family, Aang, Toph, Suki, Sokka. They were children but they weren’t, and Katara would do anything to take that pain off of them. But she couldn’t. And she certainly couldn’t undo anything that happened to Zuko, as much as she wished to. He had to betray and leave behind everything he knew to right his family’s wrongs, and had gotten shot by lightning for it. 

_ That was me. He got shot for me.  _

Then, as he was healing from the lightning strike, on a quiet Thursday evening dinner in his room, Zuko passed out because of poison in his food. To this day, Katara could recall the wave of fear and despair that rose when the Fire Sage Ryu had burst into her room, and said “Zuko.” 

The next two weeks had been a blur of the world moving around her and Zuko, as if they were the eye of a storm. She sat by his side day and night, pleading for him to hold on. To heal for her. For his country. She had almost lost him once, she couldn’t do it again. 

Katara took a silent breath to ease her increasing heart rate. 

She made her way across the room, and even though all that lit the room was a single candle, each foot was placed with confidence. After the countless healing sessions Zuko and her have done, she had the layout of his rectangular room memorized. The burnt sienna dresser with a gold ornate mirror to her right where she had brushed her hair countless times while talking to Zuko. The deep mahogany loveseat that sat in the left corner where she had sketched a snoozing Zuko. The balcony doors on the left side of his bed, where she had spent a long time gazing into the room to watch Zuko sleep. The night table where a week ago her hand had lay when Zuko kissed it. 

Tonight, a bowl of water sat there, waiting for her on the right side of Zuko’s bed. 

As she sat down beside Zuko, who had not yet woken, she could see the star shaped scar beaming an angry, brilliant red on his chest. After being poisoned the injury refused to heal under Katara’s bending for days, Zuko’s chi dimming under her careful hands. But Zuko was a survivor, and so was Katara, and together he pulled through. If she could get rid of this infection, Zuko could be walking again in less than a week. 

The royal doctor had taken one look at the poison and infection and declared there was nothing he could do and Katara was the only one who could save the future of the Fire Nation. But, she was only a fourteen year old girl with her hands and a bowl of water. 

_ And that’s all I need. I’m a master waterbender from the Southern Water Tribe and the best healer Zuko could have.  _

With confidence, Katara adjusted her seat closer to the bed and bent water from the bowl onto her hands. 

Gently placing her hands on Zuko’s chest, and her hands began to glow. She closed her eyes, searching for Zuko’s chi to heal his body. For an inexplicable reason, Katara always sought out Zuko’s chi, his inner flame, while she healed him. Even though she used water to heal him, the flame seemed to burn brighter, grow stronger as she did, as if it remembered how she had stoked it’s spark before it went out. 

_____________________________________

_ Lala I’m gonna beat you! _

_ No you’re not, Zuzu, I’m going to find Lu Ten first! _

Zuko dragged himself to wakefulness, pulling away from memories that hurt too much to look back at. He blinked awake, to see the dark red canopy of his bed that tinged a blue glow.  _ Blue glow? _

Zuko slowly turned his head to the left, and there she was. Katara had her eyes closed, hands placed on his bare chest and had begun healing him.  _ And I didn’t even wake up _ . He pushed away the questions that emerged at that thought(When did I start feeling safe enough to sleep while someone was in the same room?) and croaked out a quiet, “Katara?”

She starts, the water falling from her hands to wet his chest and bedspread. Katara opened her eyes to look at him, and Zuko immediately swam in blue. Her eyes reflected the moonlight that streamed through his balcony’s glass doors, making them look like they held all the stars in the galaxy. 

“Spirits, Zuko. I didn’t want to wake you,” she said apologetically, “but I wanted to do an extra healing session at night with the full moon. It should speed your recovery.” She clenched her hands into fists on his chest on the work ‘recovery.’

Zuko moved his right arm, covering Katara’s hand with her own. “Okay, don’t worry about it, Katara,” he murmured, giving her a small sleepy smile. Katara grinned back, “Well now that you’re awake, do you want to hear about what I’ve done this week?”

Zuko pushed himself up, now even more awake. “Yes! How’s Uncle handling regency? How’re Aang and Toph?” Katara giggled, bending the fallen water back onto her hands. 

“Okay Lord Zuko-” she began. 

“Katara-”

Katara rolled her eyes, as the glow from her hands healing him returned to the room. “The sarcasm in that went right over your head. Anyways, we’re all doing okay, Uncle Iroh is doing amazing as the Fire Lord Regent, he set this law today that-”

Zuko watched Katara as she told him everything he had missed, her face alight with emotions. She spoke animatedly, telling him about her, Aang and Toph cleaning his Mother’s garden, reconstructing it the way he had drawn for them. Sokka and her talking to Fire Nation civilians to see scope out civil unrest, and how Mai was taking control of his security, and apparently was quite close with Katara now. From each story, she ended it with “I missed you,” or “I wish you had been there.” 

With the moonlight, the glow from healing, the contrast of the blue and red and Katara’s happiness that seemed to make everything brighter in the dark of night, Zuko could almost burst with his love for Katara. 

“I love you.” 

Katara froze, her body going still, the glow of her healing hands wavering. 

Of course, because he was Zuko and had a hard time thinking things through, he went outright and said it. They have never kissed, never done anything more romantic than holding hands and staring at each other when the other was asleep(he had caught Katara staring at him from the love seat once). 

“Uh, um, I-I was just thinking out loud of what I’m going to say to Uncle when I see him tomorrow?” Zuko quickly said, wincing. Even he could hear the question mark in his weak coverup. 

Katara didn’t say anything. Dropping her hands from his chest, Zuko immediately felt the loss of them. 

“Katara?” he asked, nervously. 

“Zuko, I-”

“No Katara,” Zuko said shaking his head, “I shouldn’t have said that when you just broke things off with Aang, and you’re too busy right now and eventually you’ll go back to the Southern Water Tribe anyways so-”

“You idiot,” Katara’s eyes filled with mirth, dancing in front of him, “I love you too.”

Zuko blinked. “Oh.”

Katara bent the water back into the bowl, and gently picked up Zuko’s hands with her own. “I didn’t want to tell you. I thought I was just being a stupid girl for falling in love so quickly, and you were recovering from an assasination attempt and a battle injury. But, you telling me right now made me realise,” Katara said as she moves Zuko’s hands to rest on either side of her face, “We don’t have to wait. Our nations are still healing.  _ We’re  _ still healing. But we can heal together. You can heal with me.”

Her hands dropped away from his but Zuko didn’t move his hands. He brushed her soft tanned skin, catching a tiny tear. “Everything’s going to change, Katara.” he said. Katara scrunched her nose at the word change, and shook her head. 

She got off of her seat, nudging him over on the bed so she could lay down beside him. She draped her arm across his abdomen, and Zuko removed his hands from her face, to hug her back, as he buried his face in her hair, breathing in the salty tang of the ocean that Katara always carries. 

“But  _ we _ won’t,” comes Katara’s reply after a beat. “You’re going to heal, and I’m going to heal. And we’ll help our nation's heal, together.” 

Zuko lifts his head from Katara’s hair to stare at the Fire Nation symbol on the bed’s curtains. “It’s going to be hard Katara. What my family did to the Southern Water Tribe...it’s outrageous,” he said. 

Zuko feels nimble fingers on his chin, pushing his face down. He faced Katara, who has tilted her face too, so her eyes met his. “My gran-gran told me once, ‘The sins of the father are not the sins of his son.’ You made your own mistakes Zuko, and you redeemed yourself to everyone. To me. Now you’re going to help redeem the rest of your family’s sins, for the betterment of the world, not because those sins are your own.” Katara said, holding his face still, “and stop being the voice of doom.”

Zuko smirked at the title, “That's how we work. I’m the voice of doom, you’re the voice of hope. We balance each other,” he responds, to which Katara rolled her eyes, and settled back onto Zuko’s chest. 

Slowly, Zuko watched Katara bend the forgotten water out of the bowl and onto her left hand. She placed her hand on his burn, and a cool sensation washed over him, as the blue glow reappeared. 

Katara’s other hand grips Zuko’s, as they hold each other in the moonlight. 

“Hey, Katara?”

‘Yeah?”

“Are  _ you _ okay?”

Katara fidgeted, her hand squeezing his tightly. Zuko wished he could see her face. 

“Honestly? I don’t know. My entire life has been about looking after others, fighting a war, healing people.  _ The Southern Water Tribe _ has been at war for decades. We’ve been beat down so low, but I know that we can build. We can build ourselves back up, and this time we’ll have the support of the other three nations.” 

Zuko didn’t say anything, sensing Katara had more say. 

“The thing is….I’m not sure who I’m going to be in this new world. I faced my mother’s killer, I’ve moved on from that, but everything else? We were on edge for a year, on our toes trying to outrun our enemies. I’ve never really slowed down before. I’ve never thought about what my life will look like without a war. When I’ve healed from this war, I don’t know who I’ll be” she admitted, her head turned into Zuko’s chest. 

Zuko has to prevent himself from chuckling at Katara, “You know, I’m not sure what my chest wants to say, but I’ll be here. With you. And I know that when you’ve healed, you’ll still be Katara. Albeit one who doesn’t have to live in a constant state of fight or flight anymore, but you’ll still be you. Full of passion and hope, and the drive to help people.” he said, carding his fingers through Katara’s loose hair. 

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

Katara brought their clasped hands to her lips, kissing his hand. “Well, you better be able to keep up with me, because we’ve got a whole world to help heal.” 

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!


End file.
